Civic Voice Survey

Do developers and Local Authorities liaise effectively with communities?

Civic Voice is the national charity for the civic movement in England. They have recently launched a survey to try and understand why people might feel that they are not effectively engaged in the planning process. Why not take the chance to contribute to the research? Civic Voice will share the results at a Parliamentary meeting on 27th March.

This is what Civic Voice say.....

The ground-breaking Skeffington Report, 'People and Planning Report of the Committee on Public Participation in Planning' was prepared by Arthur Skeffington MP and the Ministry of Housing and Local Government and was published in 1969. The Skeffington Committee was appointed in 1968 to assess how the public might become more involved in the creation of local development plans. This was in response to the belief that the introduction of the Town and Country Planning Act created a largely 'top down' system.

50 years on many people still believe that public consultation is a gesture only. From a developer and local authority perspective, public participation poses its own challenges and care needs to be taken if advantages gained through expenditure on time and labour on public participation are not to be outweighed by harm resulting from an overly prolonged planning process. 50 years on from Skeffington Report, Civic Voice wants to understand why we are still having the same debate?

Civic Voice's latest survey clearly states that communities still do not feel sufficiently engaged by developers and local authorities. As of 26th February 2019, 81% of respondents said that they do not feel as though developers effectively engage with the community and 72% said the same about local planning authorities. This latest survey by Civic Voice wants to get a deeper understanding of the issues behind these results as we try to organise and support civic societies and other communities to engage more meaningfully in the planning system.

The results of this survey will be combined with the Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission Survey. We will launch the initial results at the Civic Voice Parliamentary meeting on March 27th 2019 to help stimulate discussion.

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